All-4-One’s Delious Kennedy, an angry college talent show audience, and me: A true story

Delious Kennedy and I have some things in common. Both of us attended the University of Maryland, College Park until 1993 (“A Terp!” he said delightedly when we talked recently). Both of us wrote for a small college paper called The Black Explosion, whose name was powerful but now sounds like something a black paper in “Undercover Brother” would have been named. And both of us are survivors of a singular evening about 24 years ago on a lonely stage, faced with a crowd of your peers that are just looking for a reason to boo you off that stage, or, if there is no reason, to boo you off anyway, because they just dig booing. They came to boo. THEY MUST BOO. SO IT IS WRITTEN. BOO-YA.

Delious survived that evening as the winner, and, eventually, a top-selling Grammy-winning member of R&B vocal group All-4-One, performing at Boca Raton’s JAZZIZ Nightlife for Valentine’s Day tomorrow night. And me? I just survived. And since the alternative was being chased off stage by the derision of a hoard you’d have to face in the dining hall…Girl, survival was enough.

In the late 80s and early 90s, the favorite late Saturday night TV junk food for a lot of kids was not “Saturday Night Live” but “Showtime At The Apollo,” a syndicated showcase of the popular mostly R&B and soul acts of the day, filmed at the historic Harlem theater. While seeing Al B. Sure! and Queen Latifah perform was a treat, the real draw was Amateur Night, a version of the real now 80-year-old tradition where up-and-coming acts submit themselves not to a panel of judges but to the audience, who either state their approval with enthusiatic cheers and clapping, or confirm their disapproval by booing and yelling until your song is mercifully over or until genial tapdancing harbinger of doom Howard “Sandman” Sims showed up to give you the hook. It was thrillingly brutal, like musical “Gladiator.” I would rather face one Simon Cowell on his most biting and mean “American Idol” day than the scorn of 1500 of them.

“I remember those shows,” Delious told me. “I think they set music back 100 years for all of us.”

It was the spring of 1990, and the UMCP chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., a historically black Greek organization (of which my very own Mommy is a member) was putting on their own “Showtime At The Apollo” show at the campus armory. For some reason, perhaps because I’ve always loved singing, and because I’ve also maybe been not that smart, I signed up. I guess I figured it was character building. And maybe I just wasn’t that smart. But I showed up on the appointed day anyway, in a cute dress and an a cappella version of Nat King Cole’s “When I Fall In Love” ready to impress – or something.

Right away, I felt I’d made a horrible mistake, because this crowd was prepared to do some booing. There was one dude in the back who booed everybody, even if they were good, just on general principle. Singers were dropping like flies – sad, defeated, dream deferred flies. I watched them get one guy who was so focused on his singing that he didn’t even notice when the show’s Fauc Sandman came and danced away every one of Dude’s backup singers. Well, didn’t notice or was frozen in fear, like, “Maybe if I just don’t move, they’ll forget I’m here. It works in the wild, right? Lalala. I can’t hear you!”

But one person was impervious to boos: Delious Kennedy. Known in some circles as “Little Luther,” because of his uncanny vocal resemblance to love song king Luther Vandross, Delious was an incredibly popular singer around campus and an all-around nice guy, with a poise beyong his years. He came out on that stage and did, I believe, “A House Is Not A Home,” which made several girls in the front row burst into flames from the first verse. He was perfect. I think Booing Guy tried to do his thing, but it was useless. Delious was a hit.

There were no such assurances with me, an awkward kid with no musical reputation on campus and, at the time, decreasing self esteem. I remember glancing over my shoulder at the open door behind the stage that lead outside to sweet anonymity. You can’t boo what you can’t catch, Suckers! But I resisted the urge to flee and stepped onstage. “When I fall in love,” I started shakily.

“Boo!” yelled Booing Guy, because this was now his job and he was good at it.

“It will be forever…” I kept singing. And a funny thing happened – It got better, and stronger. I think Booing Guy kept doing his thing, but everyone else seemed to like it. They weren’t wild for it or anything, but it was pleasant. I finished the first verse and chorus, nodded to the crowded, and politely sprinted off stage like Carl Lewis.

“Hey!” the host said. “Isn’t there another verse?”

“Not today there isn’t,” I said, ducking out.

“You get flashbacks?” Delious asked, laughing, as I told him that story last week. Sometimes, man, sometimes. That moment taught me I was tougher than I thought. It also reminded me that Kenny Rogers was right – You got to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, when to walk away, and when to run before they boo you off.